Fostering collaboration among Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Practitioners and Community in Colorado

Photo: Celesté Martinez of Celestial Alegria, Ana Babic-Rosario of DU's CIBIC, Sarah Rimmel of Slow Integration Coaching, and Kanitha Heng Snow of Kanitha Studio

It was great to organize a gathering on 1/122/24 alongside DU’s Consumer Insights and Business Innovation Center, Energize Colorado & Kanitha Heng Snow. We’re grateful for Kate Bailey, MBA at TARRA, LLC for the lovely space to connect with ShopBIPOC business owners, DEI Pracitioners, government, university, and entrepreneurial community members. We reviewed recommendations from a new Colorado DEI Consulting Market & Collaborative Analysis report and discussed ways to activate on recommendations. Thank you to all who joined us.

Note: DEI refers to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

key takeaways from the Event & Report:

Despite extremely intentional, strategic, and well-financed efforts to attack and halt DEI efforts, DEI work is not going anywhere. Not as long as we have people working within organizations for whom their dignity, wellbeing, healing, and inclusion matter. Dispersed individuals and communities of DEI practitioners and other stakeholders need to be even more strategic and intentional in our response.
Check out the video below on DEI Insights from Landmark Cases to Corporate Realities w/ Love Odih Kumuyi and Michael Tucker for detailed explanations of the intentional attacks on DEI efforts.
https://www.linkedin.com/events/7153266797264203776/comments/
Despite industry dynamism and diverse providers, the field faces misunderstanding and undervaluation. Collaboration among practitioners, and support from the broader community, could significantly impact Colorado, enhancing outcomes and supporting positive change. Check out industry trends in the report.
This project started because Sarah was committed to professionals not doing unpaid work and people getting their needs met (both the practitioners getting paid and people being able to access services they need/want). This project started with a small Energize Colorado grant to support the researchers. Apart from that, we’ve been volunteering to get the report launched. Next up: Mobilize resources and form a strong ecosystem of people and doers who want to activate on report recommendations.
DEI practitioners have a unique skill set, passion, and commitment to support others in thinking, feeling, and doing things differently- all under the umbrella of DEI+ solutions. DEI professionals are developed in a unique combination of topic areas and core competencies and have committed years to their intercultural awareness of self and others. How many people can say this? Based on the interviews conducted and database analysis, this includes work to shift how we think about leadership, confront racism, be more disability centric in our design thinking and operations, address workplace conflict, create sustainability, analyze how white supremacy and other forms of domination are rewarded in our performance systems, and have more fun and cultivate joy while we’re doing it.
We have over 90 individuals/teams who offer DEI services in Colorado with a variety of capacities, skills, resources. Imagine mobilizing and coordinating among each other. Imagine if we create infrastructures to support improving access, sharing resources/best practices, and tracking outcomes among each other? Individually we can do a lot, but together, we can have a deeper, more meaningful, and easeful impact on our community.
The answer is yes and we need help. There are roadblocks such as finances or challenges with scaling, tracking outcomes, or growing team size, to collaboratively solve for. Practitioners are at various phases in their businesses, and have similar and different needs. Many practitioners want to collaborate more, benefiting themselves and the collective; the more we can develop structures to support and make it easier to collaborate, the better.
1. Hire DEI Consultants
2. Ensure Fair Compensation
3. Provide Referrals, Feedback, and Testimonials for Trusted DEI Professionals
4. Listen to and Advocate with DEI professionals
5. Amplify and Clarify the DEI Consulting Field
6. Funding to Further Strengthen the Field
Access details within the report: https://lnkd.in/gy34mVtH
- Seed money to start new initiatives
- Seed money to subsidize services for clients/orgs with limited financial resources
- Grassroots collective data tracking of DEI impact across practitioners across the state
- Increased access to no/low-cost/shared-cost business development
- Supporting collaborative responses to RFPs
- Enabling ease of content/training/curriculum-sharing/professional development among each other to strengthen overall competency of DEI providers
- Developing a referral network utilized by folks throughout the state
- Access to no/low-cost/shared-cost co-working space
- Collaborative push on the value of DEI work and educating/reframing narratives to the public
Access details within the report: https://lnkd.in/gy34mVtH
- Read and share the report: https://lnkd.in/gy34mVt
- Fill out this survey if you’ve read the report to share feedback: https://forms.gle/sJRmUkACsjYNFYpR6
- We need funding and doers within the industry and the ecosystem who care about DEIJ work.
- Who is working on this already? Do you have ideas on who is interested in funding these efforts? Please fill out above survey and/or reach out to Hello@SarahRimmel.com to collaborate.